Chapter 94

I could hear the sounds of fighting behind me. Although it was a fight between two people, the cacophony of eruptions made it seem like I was running from a small battlefield. I didn’t want to leave Baba behind, but she was never truly my follower. From the beginning, she had always been her own woman. She had traveled by my side of her agency, and although she had helped me many times, it was ultimately because she had her own goals which she felt aligned with my own.

I had always known that there would be a point when we’d part ways. I had feared a time would come when our goals wouldn’t align and she’d become my enemy. Upon seeing her battling that other magus, I was glad that such an event never came to be. Still, it had been an inevitability that the pair of us would eventually split. She had her path to travel, and I had mine. Whether this would be the end of her path or not, I couldn’t guess, but a small part of me did hope we met again.

On the other hand, I had more important things to concern myself with. The noises of the magus fighting were assuredly going to bring faery soldiers down on this palace, and I needed to find out where the rest of the girls were and escape. I had a feeling that we had done everything in the faery realm we could hope to accomplish. We had overstayed our welcome, and every moment we remained was tempting fate.

Thankfully, I didn’t have to go far before a large form appeared in front of me. The massive creature charged forward, and I jumped to the side. A faery guard had managed to chase after me despite the messy situation in the courtyard. He had been following me stealthily, and he was just about to strike. However, I jumped aside, and a charging dragon appeared in my place.

“Ahhhh!” That scream was all he could let out before Aster’s jaws clamped down on him and threw him aside like a ragdoll.

“Daddy, we have to go!” Those were brought my eyes up to see a young girl sitting on top of Aster.

“Isabella!” I let out another sigh of relief.

I knew she had survived already, but I had still worried about sending her into that prison. The magus had just been there, and if Aster had encountered such a monster, I wasn’t confident he could have killed him like he did those faery guards.

“Come on!” Isabella pulled out her hand.

She might have been acting full of bravado, but she was still a young girl. If I grabbed her hand, rather than pull me up, I’d be pulling her off of Aster. I jumped up onto his back of my own accord, causing her to blush slightly. I had never attempted to ride the dragon before, but my daughter had somehow conned him into it. It must have been because of his perverted nature. He usually liked breasts, which my young daughter didn’t possess, so I hadn’t thought there would be an issue, but if this perverted dragon tried to act too comfortable with my daughter, I would make sure there were repercussions.

Aster must have felt the glare on the back of his head because he turned back and gave me an aggrieved look. I remained cold while defensively putting my arm around my daughter to protect her from such a pervert. Since there wasn’t time to address the issue, he shook his head and started moving rapidly down the hallway. Aster could move as fast as a horse, but he could also take corners as smoothly as a snake. It was a bit difficult to hold on, and I soon couldn’t protect my daughter as I did my best to cling to Aster’s scales. On the other hand, Isabella seemed to be able to handle it incredibly smoothly without any indication of discomfort or fear.

Since the movements were so rapid, I wasn’t able to keep track of his movements as he took corner after corner and moved at a rapid pace. Thankfully, I didn’t have to wait too long as we came to a stop after only about a minute or two. When I was finally able to take in my surroundings, I frowned a bit. I recognized this place. It was the same courtyard where I had met my daughter for the first time. We had ended up traveling deeper into the palace instead of leaving it.

This was an extremely dangerous spot. It was the lair of the faery queen. I didn’t know how beat up she was after my stunt or how long it would take her to recover. However, the celestials would be coming any minute, and we should have been leaving the city, not going deeper inside. Yet, my eyes landed on my sisters, Saria, and Bala, so I knew that he had taken me to the right place.

“Why are we meeting here?” I demanded, sliding off the dragon as quickly as possible and feeling a bit better for it. “We’re deeper in the palace.”

Lucilla gave a slight shake of her head. “There is an emergency escape in this courtyard. Only mother knows about it, and I found it by accident while spending so many years in this courtyard with nothing to do. If we can escape through there, no one will know which direction we went.”

As Lucilla spoke, she was kneeling in a bush, feeling around with her hands. After a few moments, she seemed to grab onto something and pull it with some effort. There was a click and a thud, and then the sound of a rusty latch opening. Captain Moar let out a surprise when he saw it, looking nervously around at everyone else. Since he had arrived in this palace, or perhaps since entering this country, he had been completely out of his element. Even as a guard, he was painfully ill-equipped to deal with any of the threats we had been dealing with. He had no choice but to stay quiet and tag along, hoping he would survive his ordeal.

Likely, the reason he was staring at the hatch was that he was recalling a certain event, the one where he lost one of the remaining soldiers beside himself that had joined us from the capital. It reminded me quite a bit of the escape hatch we had taken to escape Lucilla as well.

“We’re not going to be drowned out, are we?” Saria stared at the well dubious, apparently mirroring our thoughts.

“This is a pathway intended for the queen. They would hardly make it so dangerous.” Lucilla sniffed.

“Very well, but what about Aster. He won’t fit.” I observed.

“Ah!” Isabella cried out, still holding the back of Aster as if that was her permanent seat. “We can’t leave him.”

Aster lifted his head, and Isabella broke into a blush. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Aster has a knack for avoiding being seen,” I spoke mostly to Isabella in an attempt to reassure her. “It shouldn’t be a problem for him to escape the castle on his own.”

“We’re going to abandon him?” Isabella stared at me tearfully.

The dragon himself seemed less concerned than the little girl riding him. The others couldn’t help but feel awkward. Aster was the only reason any of them were out of the jail cell. I would have been either dead or skewered, and the rest of them would still be awaiting their fate. Aster had ended up protecting all of them, and it felt a bit wrong to immediately abandon him and allow him to fend for his own.

“Izzy, you need to come with us.” Lucilla’s patience ran out and she spoke in a no-nonsense tone. “Aster will be fine.”

It might seem heartless, but they were wasting time and it was her daughter’s life on the line. However, no sooner had she said it than Isabella grabbed tightly with a stubborn look on her face.

“I won’t leave him!” She cried out.

“Izzy!”

“Isabella, go to your mother,” I spoke coldly.

“But-”

“I’ll leave with him.”

“You’re the one most at risk!” Saria protested.

I reached out and grabbed the dragon by the side. “I’m not going to abandon Aster either. The rest of you go on. We’ll make it out on our own.”

Well, it wasn’t like I would have made this sacrifice if I didn’t have to. I figured we had about a 50% chance of making it out alive before the celestials arrived. That said, if we kept lingering there and arguing, we had a 100% chance of eventually catching the attention of the faery queen, and then it was all over. I had only known Isabella for a short time, but I understood her enough to know she wasn’t going to budge unless something drastic happened. Sacrificing myself seemed to be exactly the thing we needed.

Isabella still had a stubborn look on her face, but she was looking at me with slightly pursed lips. “Y-you promise?”

“I promise, on the honor of a devil,” I responded.

The other girls shot me weird looks, but they had the good conscience not to mention how little honor such an oath meant. I initially left it open-ended. It wasn’t that I wanted Isabella to start hating devils, but if a situation arise where I could escape at Aster’s expense, I would take it, and I didn’t want something like a stronger oath on my conscious. This was one I could break without worry.

She watched me a few more moments before she nodded to herself and slowly worked her way off the dragon. She was so short I had to grab her butt to keep her from sliding off the side and falling with a crash. Even Aster had to lower himself down low to the ground to help out. When she was finally on the ground, I gave each of the girls a firm look.

“Go. Now!”

I grabbed Aster, turning away. The girls were giving me teary-eyed looks, but we didn’t have the kind of time for tearful goodbyes. If things went well, we’d be meeting up again shortly. We hadn’t made any plans, but I was depending on Aster’s superior tracking ability to help out. It seemed like I’d have to depend on him again. Who knew when I took on this burden, he would end up being so useful to me even at that age?

I pulled Aster, but he didn’t move. At that point, I started to feel some irritation.  The palace had been rumbling with the sounds of distant booms as the two magus fought, but those sounds had slowed and weakened to the point where I could no longer feel anything. That meant that the fight between them was already over. Escaping the magus was already going to be hard enough. If I had to add to that the celestials, I didn’t feel confident.

I turned to Aster, and Aster gave me a look back. “We have to go now. You can’t fit in that hole, so we have to find some other way.”

I suspected Aster knew more than he let on, but I still repeated myself just in case he didn’t catch on as much as I had originally thought. Aster continued to stare at me unmoving. I was starting to feel helpless, but that was when his body started to change. It started a little at first, but it speed up once it started taking shape. His body began to shrink down, his nose shrinking and his wings disappearing. I was a bit stunned at first.

Dragons could shrink themselves? Was the dragon we encountered unencumbered by its weight? If it could have just shrunk itself at any time, why did it allow itself to be trapped in that mountain and unmoving for so many years? However, just when I thought the dragon was turning into a smaller version of itself, I realized its body was still warping. I began to see two arms and two legs, and when the flash of mana finally faded, a girl was standing there.

She looked to be only a few years older than my daughter, not even in her teens yet, and she was completely naked. Even though the transformation had occurred right in front of my eyes, I still had trouble believing it. She had fiery red hair and dragon-slitted eyes but otherwise looked completely like a human. Aster could turn into a human. No, it was more than that. Aster was a girl!

“Aster?” I knew it was a dumb thing to ask, but I couldn’t help myself.

Aster nodded, reaching out and grabbing my shirt. When I gave her a questioning look, her cheeks blushed and she looked away.

“Is brother fated to seduce every girl!?” Olivia cried out angrily.

“You should be glad he can, or we’d all be dead.” Lucilla tried to reassure her.

“Are you telling me that you could have shrunk to such a convenient size and passed off as human this entire time?” I asked in a deadpan voice.

Aster stiffened. She had been hiding such an ability from me! If I knew Aster had such a convenient form, how would I have allowed Duheart to know of her existence, even if he had luckily mistaken her for a wyvern?

“Now’s not the time to argue.” Saria cut in. “Since she can through the exit, then it’s time for us to leave.”

‘I’m afraid it’s too late for that. The celestials are already here, and they have trained their senses on you.” A voice came from above, and we all looked up to see an angelic beauty flowing gracefully down from the sky.

None of us felt awe though. Instead, there was a feeling of regret and dread. The faery queen had finally noticed our presence and arrived. We ended up taking too long, just as I had feared.

“Mother…” Olivia whispered.

Aurica didn’t even spare her a glance, her eyes locked on me instead. “Devil Prince, so this is where you’ve been hiding. After what you did to me, did you think I would let you leave like that?”

“Well, I wasn’t intending on asking for permission,” I responded bitterly.

“No, I suppose you don’t.” Her body blurred, landing on the ground right in front of me.

Bala went for her sword, but I held up my hand to stop her. Two others moved in front of me though. The first was my daughter, and the second was Aster. The two youngest of the group were also the two who dare to put their life between me and the queen.

“Oh, hoh?” Aurica lifted an eyebrow. “Did you think a granddaughter would keep you from me, let alone a… is that a dragon?”

I stiffened as Aurica turned her eyes on Aster for the first time. Aster shook visible, which showed the kind of pressure the faery queen could give off when she wanted to. Even a dragon couldn’t resist fearing her.

“She has nothing to do with this,” I responded, grabbing both girls and pushing them behind me.

“No, I’m impressed. To think that you’ve formed a blood pact with a dragon.”

“Blood pact?” I looked at Aster, who didn’t look back, her eyes focused on Aurica like a prey watching a predator even though Arica wasn’t meeting her eyes anymore. “I have no such thing.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t done while you are aware. Dragons are crafty creatures, after all.” She responded flippantly.

Had the dragon done some kind of blood ritual between me and its daughter? Perhaps it had seen the writing on the wall and decided the best course of action was to tie our fates together. It had acted nonchalant about whether I held Aster or not, but it had simultaneously assured I would have no choice but to aid its child. It had been a sneaky and intelligent creature.

“What does a blood pact mean?” I wanted to keep her talking, my mind working furiously on an escape.

“Even I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Such a thing hasn’t occurred since before written history. I only know of it from rumors. You truly earn the fear the celestials have for you.”

“Fear?” I asked, feeling a bit incredulously. “What fear? They have been using me from the beginning.”

“Why do you think their actions have been so inconsistent? They want you to be a devil prince, but they simultaneously fear you will become something that can pose a threat to their power. The older you become and the longer you’ve had power, the more desperate you become to keep it. The celestials fear you, David. You should remember that.”

“And what about you?” I asked, grinning.

“I don’t fear you.” She responded. “I only possess a single feeling for you, and its strength burns through every fiber of my being.”

“I see, so you’ve come to settle things with me?”

“Of course!” She laughed in a melodic voice. “I’m going to give you exactly what you deserve.”

“Fine, but let my sisters go! They’re your children!” I declared.

I didn’t add her grandchild or the elf princesses, but I hoped they’d be implied.

“Hmph! I’ll deal with them later, right now, it’s time to deal with you.”

Her body blurred again. I tried to call my will and pull my sword. I suspected Captain Moar tried to move, and Bala did the same. However, all of us seemed to have been frozen in place. My will was completely out of reach, and I knew the queen was suppressing me completely. She reappeared, and this time she was right in front of me. Her cold eyes stared into my mind, and for the first time since I had come to that world, I felt like I could feel the icy hand of death.

At that moment, she moved, and I was helpless to defend as I took her most powerful attack.